The waiting game
How politicians get re-elected by not solving problems…
Recently, House Democrats passed a police reform bill that would have cracked down on police brutality and misuse of force.
Naturally, Senate Republicans didn’t like the House bill and came up with one of their own.
And as you might have expected, Senate Democrats didn’t like the Republicans bill, said the legislation wasn’t salvageable and resisted debating or amending the bill.
(If you want to look for a ray of sunshine – and why wouldn’t you? – some states are going forward with their own police reform bills and may have more success than the people in Washington D.C. which isn’t a real high bar to clear.)
The cartoon above was inspired by the news that police reform was being held back – or in this case down – by partisan politics.
And that’s not the only issue suffering from the same problem.
After every mass shooting – and we’ve had way too many of those – there are protests and hearings and press conferences and then because we have the attention span of an inbred Chihuahua who just finished a Trenta Starbucks we move on to the next issue and nothing meaningful gets done.
(Just in case you haven’t heard, apparently a Venti Starbucks – 20 ounces – wasn’t quite large enough for people who need a jolt of electricity to get their hearts started in the morning, so they came up with a 31-ounce Trenta which is Italian for “over-caffeinated to homicidal level.”)
So where were we?
Oh, yeah…because we can’t stay focused on one issue long enough to accomplish anything, we move on to the next issue and nothing gets done.
And some people count on that.
A cynical point of view
A guy I knew who knew about this kind of stuff once told me there always had to be some kind of tax bill being kicked around and when I asked why (it seemed like our tax code was already complicated enough) he said so both sides could raise money.
Politicians and lobbyists who were against the tax bill could ask for donations to stop it; politicians and lobbyists for the tax bill could ask for donations to get it passed.
Extrapolate that cynical point of view and you see why politicians and lobbyists on either side of an issue might need to have a crisis which is one of the reasons things don’t get done; you can’t raise money to solve a problem that’s already been solved.
Take it one step further and maybe the Democrats and Republicans are OK without police reform because then both of them can use the issue in November. The Democrats can say they’re trying to stop the Nazis on the right and the Republicans can say they’re trying to stop the Commies on the left.
Why reform the police?
Do that and you won’t have that issue to use against your opponent on Election Day.
Deep down in their heart of hearts I suspect some politicians don’t care if anything really gets accomplished as long as they can use that lack of accomplishment to get re-elected.
And if that seems overly cynical, let me leave you with a paraphrased quote from one of my favorite authors, Robert B. Parker:
You’re either cynical of misinformed.
Spot on. Thanks Lee. Love your work.
I couldn't agree more.